The use of printed books and documents (hereafter referred to as simply “documents”) has been commonplace for many hundreds of years. Various tools and strategies have evolved to try to make more effective use of printed documents. These range from handwritten (or typed) notes on the contents of documents (either on the document itself or in a separate but related document), to highlighting passages in a document deemed to be of greater significance, to manually copying passages from a document (or using a scanning copier, despite the fact that copyrights are often so infringed), to the simple act of including a printed index at the end of a document to facilitate locating information on a specific topic. Many new tools and strategies have been made possible when a document can be accessed in an electronic, searchable format such as a file on a local computer or a web page that can be accessed with a browser.
The relatively recent innovation of providing a searchable electronic copy of a document that can be accessed using a standard personal computer is quite powerful in increasing the ease with which the desired contents can be accessed and utilized. When a traditional index is provided in such a context, once an entry is found, a single click of the mouse can take the user directly to the desired entry in the electronic text. Once a relevant entry has been found, its location can be retained as a “bookmark,” filed according to the users choice, making future access to the location in the electronic document quick and easy.
A problem is that these very useful tools cannot be used with the vast resource of printed books and documents. Even though there are tremendous advantages that accrue with access to an electronic version of a document, these are only available when such an electronic version is available (and a computer is available to access the electronic document). Even in those instances where such an electronic version is available, this still does little to enhance the actual use of the paper document itself. Furthermore, when newer revisions and updated versions of either the paper or the electronic version of a document become available, the owner of a previous version generally has little recourse but to go and purchase a new, updated copy of the material.
As is well known in the art, by using traditional methods for document processing (such as, for example, a flatbed scanner combined with appropriate computer software for optical character recognition), a user can create an electronic version of a paper document. However, in addition to the fact that such a task is laborious, time-consuming, and generally error-prone, it often involves infringement of the copyright held by the author of the material in question. Further, even when an electronic version of a document is thus created, it is still subject to the limitations mentioned above—a computer is required to make any use of the additional features offered, and little additional utility is provided for the paper document itself. Despite the prevalence of computers, and despite the advantages conveyed by searchable electronic versions of documents, the continued widespread preference for creating and using paper documents is a clear indication of how attractive they remain to the average user. The portability, convenience, ease of viewing, and even the “feel” of paper documents clearly retain a powerful appeal to most individuals.
With regard to electronic documents, various amounts of useful information may be collected and recorded for later use. For example, a news website includes many advertisements that appear on the same pages as certain articles. The news website host has the ability to determine how many times a certain page/article is accessed by viewers. This information may be used to determine how much to charge for advertisement space that is proximate to the viewed page/article. Furthermore, a given advertisement may appear in a number of different web pages, and may be as simple as a single link to an advertiser's website that is embedded within a number of different pages on a variety of websites. When a given customer goes to an advertiser's website by following one of these embedded links, the owner or sponsor of the webpage within which the followed link was embedded is credited for the “click-through” which brought the customer to the advertiser's website. The owner or sponsor of the webpage that was the source of the click-through is then paid by the advertiser according to whatever agreement exists between them.
This level of detailed and precise information is not currently available to publishers of paper documents (e.g., newspapers, magazines, etc.), so other methods are used today which provide only a gross approximation of the desired information. Subscribership—the number of subscribers to a periodical—is one way to determine popularity of articles. However, publications usually include many articles, and individual subscribers may or may not read a specific article, so determining which articles and ads were viewed, and by how many readers, and by which specific readers, can only be a guess. Specific information pertaining to popularity of articles, authors, ads, etc. are sometimes obtained through some form of survey (e.g., written or telephonic)—but this can be a labor-intensive and expensive process, the results may not be highly accurate, and the process of performing a survey introduces a delay in determining this information. Thus today, because of these difficulties in determining how often articles and ads viewed by readers, advertising fees are based primarily on the size of ads (i.e., page, half page, quarter page, etc.) and the location of ads within a publication, rather than on how many people actually see the ads.
Therefore, there exists a need to more easily determine viewership of articles or ads in printed publications, where viewership is at minimum a measure of how many people viewed specific articles or ads. The underlying commercial model for publishing and advertising can be further enhanced with more detailed viewership information which encompasses, for example, the specific identity or certain demographic characteristics of the viewers, or an approximate measurement of how much time was spent viewing specific articles or ads on average or by a specific viewer.